Re: GROUPLANG: optional features and case

At 20:06 18/10/98 -0200, you wrote:
>Herman Miller wrote:
>
>>Well, the only case I remember suggesting was Genitive anyway, which falls
>>under Attributive, so this is fine with me. The term "agentive" is a bit
>>confusing, but we'll have our own "grouplang" words for the cases
>>eventually. (BTW, what should we call the lang itself?)
>
>"The Tongue" is fine, tho a bit pretentious :-)
>"Our Tongue" would be just right. I suggest we make a compound of
>"our" (exclusive 1st pers) + "tongue", where the pronoun is inflected
>by whatever means we have to show our importance :-)
>Or it could be something like "The Tongue of the Makers"...
>
>>I also think that dative doesn't really belong under the attributive case,
>>but I'm not sure what would be a better place for it. Absolutive, perhaps?
>
>Let's take a verb with two objects, like "give", and do this:
>
>erg-I pat-it pred-give_away-susp, erg-you (pat-it) pred-take
>OR
>erg-I pat-it pred-give_away-susp, abs-you (pat-it) pred-have
>OR
>caus-I pat-it abs-you pred-have
>
>I don't know if this is easy, or totally correct, but I think
>it conveys the information... and it's nice to have different
>ways to say a thing.
>
>
>>>> > As I posted earlier I'd rather tag on the predicate whether it's verb
or noun-rooted, then
>>>> >cases would be understood from context.
>>
>>It sounds essentially equivalent to my suggestion to use specific
>>derivational affixes. Making it optional would allow for brevity when the
>>meaning is obvious.
>
>That's what English does, even when the meaning is not so obvious.
>I've always felt strange about such words as "dustman", meaning the
>guy who removes the garbage from cans. I think I would have called
>him "degarbager" or something like that...
>Spanish has a related problem regarding the word "hue'sped", which
>means "host" but also "guest"!
>
        Same problem in French where "h=F4te" (=F4 is circomflex o) means=
 "host"
and "guest".

>
>--Pablo Flores
>
>
                                                Christophe Grandsire
                                                |Sela Jemufan Atlinan C.G.

"R=E9sister ou servir"

homepage: http://www.bde.espci.fr/homepage/Christophe.Grandsire/index.html